From the 13th of December to the 3rd of January Bureau d’Espoir occupies the performance gallery ZSenne. With the 22 days ongoing performance ‘Battery’ in the street windows of the building in which two hope researchers test the power of the machine to turn dire circumstances into hopeful ones. And with the Natural History Museum of Hope: an active exhibition and performance installation in which visitors can come to exchange Hope Objects, browse through the Hope Library or have a sessions with the caretakers to read the Tarot of Hope with them.

The more adventurous visitors are also invited to join the performers in the battery, as test volunteers to try out different strategies of hope, developed by Bureau d’Espoir.The opening of Bureau d’Espoir takes places on the 13th of December from 19:00 onwards. This marks the start of the Hope Object Exchange, accompanied by The Hope Sessions, a sample concert using the material of hope interviews conducted over the last 5 months.

Next to these ongoing activities, Bureau d’Espoir also organizes lectures and concerts on the topic of Hope today.

We’ll provide you with our services. From the moment you enter in the space the transformation that you will allow can take place. We’ll carry you away and bring you “home, healed”. Healing is a process of confrontation. Our help is a dedication. And fake reinvents your reality.It lies in the preceding expectations of the beholder what is perceived as real and what as fake. The problem is not to perceive real as real and fake as fake but to apply to them a hierarchical positioning. Something can only be really real by the existence of its fake counterpart. By understanding and experiencing opposites as multiple perspectives instead of a dualistic stubbornness we can detach ourselves from limiting concepts and access the full spectrum of creation.

Helena Dietrich is an artist from Munich, Germany, currently doing a postgraduate research project in a.pass (Advanced performance and scenography studies) in Brussels. In her two week residency in ZSenne she works and experiments for her a.pass project: "LILI – a tool for relating" deals with construction of the self and methods to relate differently to the self, to establish through that a different approach to collectivity. In her work she experiments with tools from various contexts to challenge our relations to self and its ideologies.

For her presentation in ZSenne she invites three guest-performers: David Chavez, Voin de Voin and Veridiana Zurita. Together they will create a magical help-center and service you.In the space there will be several boxes, where the visitors can enter and experience the so called Lilification.

During two test-retreats in 2012 Renée Copraij and Heike Langsdorf showed the image with the two sitting bodies three times a day and worked already with other people on this image. In 2013 they plan to develop choreographies, all of which will be based on this first image and eventually will be carried out by Copraij en Langsdorf as well as by other interested Brussels residents."sitting with the body is an exercise for body and mind which is accessible for everyone en which teaches 'to look inward'. We want to develop images with our bodies for public places in the city which let you experience the space in your own body. The first image we present is this exercise. When the shutters are closed we are busy with the next image." pics

Every day a new sitting is shown at 9h /12h /17u. / Saturday 9/2/2013 there wil be 6 sessions: 9h /11h /13h /15h Closing session: 17h with drinks During another 10 days sitting with the body we searched for movements that can be combined with the initial image of the two sitting bodies. Regardless to where the found movement footage came from, we attempt to execute it in a meditative state.